Category Archives: Asheville Attractions

NBC’s Brian Williams and Chuck Todd underscored the damage that the government shutdown has done to politicians in general and the Republicans in particular in their Thursday report on the network’s latest poll.

The poll was especially bad for the GOP. Todd said that the party’s 53 percent disapproval rating was “the worst rating for Republicans in this poll’s nearly 25-year history.”

Overall, Todd said, “this swift and resounding public response to the shutdown even shocked our pollsters.”

“These were jaw-dropping numbers,” one of those pollsters, Democrat Peter Hart, told the network.

On Friday’s “Morning Joe,” Todd continued the theme.

“John Boehner and Ted Cruz have successfully done what Newt Gingrich couldn’t do: get a majority of the country to blame the Republicans rather than a plurality,” he said. He added that the Republicans had also made Obamacare “less unpopular” with Americans.

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?” The door is locked and a sign is posted saying that the site

  Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/11/chuck-todd-gop-obamacare-nbc-news-poll_n_4083917.html If you need a cheap air ticket, hotel or rental car please visit http://www.airticket.com

Gas prices in the state average $3.27, compared to $3.47 a month ago and $3.72 a year ago, the organization said in a news release Friday. Since reaching a summer high of $3.56 on July 21, which was spurred by concerns over the conflict in Egypt, gas prices have been steadily falling.

The last time gas was cheaper in North Carolina was on Dec. 26, 2012, when prices averaged $3.26.

“Falling gas prices is great news for drivers,” David E. Parsons, president and CEO of AAA Carolinas, said in the release. “We expect prices to continue trending downward, barring any major supply or distribution issues, such as tensions in the Middle East or a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.”

It’s also great news for Henderson County.

“Any time we have gas prices to go down, it translates to tourism dollars,” said Beth Carden, executive director of Henderson County Travel and Tourism. “People are still traveling, but they will spend more locally if they don’t have to pay higher prices for gas. They’ll spend more money in stores and to go to events and things like that.”

Carden said the county will take any help it can get.

“We’ve had a really good year

Article source: http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20131011/articles/131019966 If you need a cheap air ticket, hotel or rental car please visit http://www.airticket.com

This week’s Family Dinner Table Talk, from HuffPost and The Family Dinner book:

Last week, our country’s government entered a partial shutdown for the first time in 17 years. Since members of Congress couldn’t agree on a new budget — particularly President Obama’s Affordable Care Act — they didn’t pass it at all. This means around 800,000 government employees can’t go to work — so national parks are closed and even medical research funded by the government has temporarily been put on pause. The National Zoo’s adorable “panda cam” has also been shut off.

Tonight, let’s talk about how this shutdown has been affecting our entire country — and our family, too.

Questions for discussion:

• Who does the shutdown affect?
• What can Congress do to end the shutdown?
• What would you do differently if you were a member of Congress?

In her cookbook, The Family Dinner, Laurie David talks about the importance of families making a ritual of sitting down to dinner together, and how family dinners offer a great opportunity for meaningful discussions about the day’s news. “Dinner,” she says, “is as much about digestible conversation as it is about delicious food.”

We couldn’t agree

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/11/table-talk-government-shutdown_n_4038774.html If you need a cheap air ticket, hotel or rental car please visit http://www.airticket.com

ASHEVILLE — Taking a cue from Pisgah Inn, officials at the Folk Art Center reopened on Thursday with hopes of regaining business momentum in the busiest month of the year.

The popular arts and crafts center on Blue Ridge Parkway east of Asheville had been closed since Oct. 1 because of the federal government shutdown.

“I’ve been watching the developments at Pisgah Inn closely,” said Tom Bailey, managing director of the Southern Highland Craft Guild, which operates the center. “We’re in the same scenario as them. There are no federal employees here, so we decided we were going to open today.”

He said he contacted the National Park Service to give notice of his intent to reopen.

“They said they wouldn’t stand in our way,” Bailey said.

Pisgah Inn reopened Wednesday after the U.S. Department of Interior decided to allow it in exchange for the business owner agreeing to drop a legal complaint.

Park service police had blocked the inn’s parkway entrances south of Asheville since last Friday, when management defied the shutdown order that also has shuttered park concessionaires nationwide. The parkway itself remains open to travelers, but police

Article source: http://www.blackmountainnews.com/article/20131011/NEWS/310110025/ If you need a cheap air ticket, hotel or rental car please visit http://www.airticket.com

Christopher Cox decided the nation’s capital was looking ratty and he was going to do something about it.

On Wednesday, the chain-saw sculptor from South Carolina planted himself on a patch of thick lawn abutting the Lincoln Memorial and started to cut the overgrown grass with a gas-powered mower. A passerby took his picture and tweeted it out. It quickly went viral. The Weekly Standard—whose Jonathan Last editorialized in a cover story that “the conduct of the National Park Service over the last week might be the biggest scandal of the Obama administration”—covered it on the magazine’s website, where Jim Swift reported that Park Police officers asked Cox to stop his act of civic-minded volunteerism. Others, such as the The Kansas City Star, picked up the story online. The local Washington CBS News affiliate did a post, interviewing Cox. Columnist Michael Barone at the Washington Examiner blogged about him, calling the fact that a South Carolinian was mowing the Lincoln Memorial grass a sign the Civil War was well and truly over.

The incident encapsulates how National Park Service closures have become the most visible face of the shutdown, now in its second week. Members

Article source: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/10/how-national-parks-became-biggest-battleground-shutdown/7224/ If you need a cheap air ticket, hotel or rental car please visit http://www.airticket.com