Hello. Welcome to O-Pinion, the editorial board's center for online discussion and commentary. I'm associate editor Fannie Flono, your host for today.
Before we get to politics, let's talk tornadoes and maybe there's a little politics associated with that too. After an EF2 tornado touched down in northeast Charlotte and southern Cabarrus County early Saturday morning, injuring several including three children who were sucked out of their house in Charlotte's Reedy Creek neighborhood, a lot of people are asking questions about why there was no warning from the National Weather Service.
A warning would have set off weather radios alerting people to take cover and that a tornado was on the ground. Sunday, the NWS admitted its meteorologists did not detect the severity of the storm. Neil Dixon with the National Weather Service said in a phone interview with WCNC, “We're using state of the art equipment the best we can, but unfortunately these events are so brief. Even though it was on the ground for about 3.2 miles, it was traveling at a very rapid rate of speed.”
Trouble is, it was the NWS in Greenville-Spartanburg that didn't see the possible tornado. The NWS in Raleigh did - and issued a warning for Stanly County that a "doppler-indicated tornado" was detected over Mecklenburg County, said meteorologist Eric Thomas of WBTV. The Raleigh NWS is in charge of issuing weather warnings for Stanly County.
On the other hand, the Greenville-Spartanburg NWS is in charge of issuing warnings for Mecklenburg and Cabarrus. Apparently not seeing what Raleigh saw, that office did not issue a warning.
Thomas notes aptly: "One would expect that adjacent NWS offices are coordinating with each other, but it seems hard to believe that was the case here. Even if the two offices didn't communicate prior to the warning, wouldn't alarms go off if a weather office issues a tornado warning by pinpointing a tornado in YOUR zone? How is it that GSP sat on the sideline while Raleigh sent out a bulletin pinpointing a doppler-indicated tornado in their zone? It's one thing to miss a radar signature and therefore miss a tornado. But in this case GSP either missed, or ignored Raleigh's tornado warning and the fact Raleigh has spotted a tornado in GSP's zone.
Something is seriously amiss here. My purpose is not to condemn either NWS office, but instead to raise questions and ask for an explanation."
Some weather experts did say, as the NWS noted, that the tornado happened so quickly that a warning wouldn't have helped much. Still, Thomas asks good questions that deserve serious contemplation. Regardless though a tornado touching down in Charlotte was an eye-opener for many. It spurred some, including me, to get truly prepared for future storms and sent several in search of a weather radio.
Super Tuesday, contraceptives and contraceptives
OK. Super Tuesday for the Republican presidential race is a day away and with pundits saying former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney needs a win in Ohio, the polls show he's in a neck-and-neck race with nemesis former Sen. Rick Santorum.
A new automated poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP), conducted from March 3-4, shows Romney and Santorum in a near tie (with 37 percent and 36 percent respectively) followed by Newt Gingrich (15 percent) and Ron Paul (11 percent).
An NBC News/Marist College live interviewer poll conducted from Feb. 29 to March 3 found a very similarly close result: Santorum (34 percent), Romney (32 percent), Gingrich (15 percent) and Paul (13 percent).
An opt-in internet panel survey conducted by Ipsos/Reuters from March 1-3 finds an exact tie, with Romney and Santorum receiving 32 percent each, followed by Gingrich (17 percent) and Paul (6 percent).
Democrats are distorting the Blunt-Nelson bill that sought to reverse a free contraceptive coverage requirement in the Obama health-care law, said John McCormack of the Weekly Standard: 'The conscience protections in the Blunt-Nelson bill are identical to the protections included in many federal health care laws on the books and even the 1994 Clinton reform that never became law. The bill wouldn’t affect state birth control mandates or federal laws that already require insurers to cover pregnancy, childbirth, mental health, HIV treatments, and other services."
McCormack aslo notes in "The High Price of 'Free' Health Care" that "today, in the United States, the federal government does not force insurers to provide free contraception. Yet contraception is as widely available as it is cheap. Most insurance policies cover it. The federal government gives birth control to the poor through Medicaid. And "if a middle- or upper-income woman happens to be in one of the small number of plans that don’t cover contraception—say, an employee at a college run by Catholic nuns—she can buy birth control pills for as little as $9 per month at Target."
Speaking of the Obama health-care law, a new poll shows swing-state voters want the law repealed. A newly released USA Today/Gallup poll showed by 53 to 40 percent swing-state voters want Obamacare to be repealed. The poll included registered voters in 12 states: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Michigan. By a margin of 15 points (53 to 38 percent), registered voters in those state think it was “a bad thing” that President Obama’s signature legislation was passed.
Back to the contraceptive measure, radio personality Rush Limbaugh's rare apology this weekend for comments he made about a young woman testifying to a congressional panel about contraceptive inclusion in health insurance policies left some advertisers wanting. They did not reverse course and return to his advertising fold. Said David Friend of Carbonite, one of those advertisers: “No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.”
Civilized public discourse? What a novel idea.
Before we get to politics, let's talk tornadoes and maybe there's a little politics associated with that too. After an EF2 tornado touched down in northeast Charlotte and southern Cabarrus County early Saturday morning, injuring several including three children who were sucked out of their house in Charlotte's Reedy Creek neighborhood, a lot of people are asking questions about why there was no warning from the National Weather Service.
A warning would have set off weather radios alerting people to take cover and that a tornado was on the ground. Sunday, the NWS admitted its meteorologists did not detect the severity of the storm. Neil Dixon with the National Weather Service said in a phone interview with WCNC, “We're using state of the art equipment the best we can, but unfortunately these events are so brief. Even though it was on the ground for about 3.2 miles, it was traveling at a very rapid rate of speed.”
Trouble is, it was the NWS in Greenville-Spartanburg that didn't see the possible tornado. The NWS in Raleigh did - and issued a warning for Stanly County that a "doppler-indicated tornado" was detected over Mecklenburg County, said meteorologist Eric Thomas of WBTV. The Raleigh NWS is in charge of issuing weather warnings for Stanly County.
On the other hand, the Greenville-Spartanburg NWS is in charge of issuing warnings for Mecklenburg and Cabarrus. Apparently not seeing what Raleigh saw, that office did not issue a warning.
Thomas notes aptly: "One would expect that adjacent NWS offices are coordinating with each other, but it seems hard to believe that was the case here. Even if the two offices didn't communicate prior to the warning, wouldn't alarms go off if a weather office issues a tornado warning by pinpointing a tornado in YOUR zone? How is it that GSP sat on the sideline while Raleigh sent out a bulletin pinpointing a doppler-indicated tornado in their zone? It's one thing to miss a radar signature and therefore miss a tornado. But in this case GSP either missed, or ignored Raleigh's tornado warning and the fact Raleigh has spotted a tornado in GSP's zone.
Something is seriously amiss here. My purpose is not to condemn either NWS office, but instead to raise questions and ask for an explanation."
Some weather experts did say, as the NWS noted, that the tornado happened so quickly that a warning wouldn't have helped much. Still, Thomas asks good questions that deserve serious contemplation. Regardless though a tornado touching down in Charlotte was an eye-opener for many. It spurred some, including me, to get truly prepared for future storms and sent several in search of a weather radio.
Super Tuesday, contraceptives and contraceptives
OK. Super Tuesday for the Republican presidential race is a day away and with pundits saying former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney needs a win in Ohio, the polls show he's in a neck-and-neck race with nemesis former Sen. Rick Santorum.
A new automated poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP), conducted from March 3-4, shows Romney and Santorum in a near tie (with 37 percent and 36 percent respectively) followed by Newt Gingrich (15 percent) and Ron Paul (11 percent).
An NBC News/Marist College live interviewer poll conducted from Feb. 29 to March 3 found a very similarly close result: Santorum (34 percent), Romney (32 percent), Gingrich (15 percent) and Paul (13 percent).
An opt-in internet panel survey conducted by Ipsos/Reuters from March 1-3 finds an exact tie, with Romney and Santorum receiving 32 percent each, followed by Gingrich (17 percent) and Paul (6 percent).
Democrats are distorting the Blunt-Nelson bill that sought to reverse a free contraceptive coverage requirement in the Obama health-care law, said John McCormack of the Weekly Standard: 'The conscience protections in the Blunt-Nelson bill are identical to the protections included in many federal health care laws on the books and even the 1994 Clinton reform that never became law. The bill wouldn’t affect state birth control mandates or federal laws that already require insurers to cover pregnancy, childbirth, mental health, HIV treatments, and other services."
McCormack aslo notes in "The High Price of 'Free' Health Care" that "today, in the United States, the federal government does not force insurers to provide free contraception. Yet contraception is as widely available as it is cheap. Most insurance policies cover it. The federal government gives birth control to the poor through Medicaid. And "if a middle- or upper-income woman happens to be in one of the small number of plans that don’t cover contraception—say, an employee at a college run by Catholic nuns—she can buy birth control pills for as little as $9 per month at Target."
Speaking of the Obama health-care law, a new poll shows swing-state voters want the law repealed. A newly released USA Today/Gallup poll showed by 53 to 40 percent swing-state voters want Obamacare to be repealed. The poll included registered voters in 12 states: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Michigan. By a margin of 15 points (53 to 38 percent), registered voters in those state think it was “a bad thing” that President Obama’s signature legislation was passed.
Back to the contraceptive measure, radio personality Rush Limbaugh's rare apology this weekend for comments he made about a young woman testifying to a congressional panel about contraceptive inclusion in health insurance policies left some advertisers wanting. They did not reverse course and return to his advertising fold. Said David Friend of Carbonite, one of those advertisers: “No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.”
Civilized public discourse? What a novel idea.
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