Open Thread – Fish First!
Join in the Fish First, Save Bristol Bay Rally!
Time Friday, December 3 · 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Location UAA Consortium Library Lawn
Pebble’s trying to legitimize their controversial risky project during a stakeholder meeting on December 3rd through a group called the Keystone Center. But Keystone’s process is flawed: Pebble is paying for it, and it starts with the biased question on HOW to “develop responsibly,” only providing perspectives of mining in other parts of the world and not giving more time to experts who understand the unique fragile complexities of the Pebble Project, the Bristol Bay region, its salmon fisheries and people.
Keystone fails to have a discussion on the most important issue: IF a relatively low-grade copper-gold deposit the huge size of Pebble should even be built near America”s richest sockeye salmon spawning grounds, in earthquake-prone, wet pristine Bristol Bay.
Show Pebble that we won’t sit around while they try buying a process to bulldoze away Bristol Bay! Let’s rally to protect Alaska’s wild salmon and fishing families, for an unbiased scientific review of Pebble! Stop by during lunch hour and get free lunch: yummy, healthy wild Alaska salmon and hot-chocolate, as well as an awesome hat that Apayo Moore designed and No-Pebble gear! Wear your fishing and No-Pebble gear and join us in making a difference! We’ll be sign making at the RRC office from 9:30-11:30 that morning, you can stop by and please invite others! Questions? Email [email protected] or call Verner 907.360.8591
Join us in protecting Alaska’s Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve that our great legislators and Governor Hammond established in 1972, to benefit all Alaskans and Americans well into the future!
Dress warm!
Don’t know if this has been posted, but it’s Kathleen Townsend Kennedy’s exceptionally relevant response to Ms. Palin’s tome and her criticism of John Kennedy. My favorite quote: Who is Palin to say what God’s “walk” is? Who anointed her our grand inquisitor?
http://wapo.st/e08w87
Sorry, NOW I see that IrishGirl posted it much earlier.
That was my favourite part of the article too.
Once again, the US and NY governments are f*cking with native rights. Read about it here (all the web pages are interesting, and there’s a page to take action):
http://www.honorindiantreaties.org/
For years, I ordered my roommate’s cigarettes from an upstate reservation shop that is now out of business. While I know more natives in South Dakota than I do in my own state (and conditions on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations are abysmal; they’re the three poorest counties in the US), I am appalled that Senator Chuck Schumer masterminded this debacle.
No matter what you think of tobacco and gasoline, these First Americans need our help.
Is anyone watching the “Gold Rush: Alaska” show on Discovery?
It’s just jaw- dropping. A bunch of incompetent guys – six of them, taking with them, if I heard correctly, 45 firearms! – taking a lot of heavy equipment to Porcupine – they have just been shown damaging a bridge by taking a loboy across with waaaay to much weight for the bridge – and they have several small children with them! This is a WTF show, you have to see this to believe it!
I know this open thread is dedicated to stopping Pebble Mine, to which I have contributed signatures too numerous to count.
I urge you to read this HuffPost account of mountaintop removal in Appalachia, and if you can, watch Deep Down on PBS.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/minefields-not-coalfields_b_791721.html
Health and peace.
Zyxomma – Unfortunately constraints here prevent me from sharing either of your references.
I am taking this opportunity again to advocate for a reasoned approach to a complex and vexing problem. I won’t go into all the ways moutaintop removal mining is unsound, but I will point out that it is cheap. Much cheaper than underground mining in the long run so long as the coal seams are shallow enough. And the core issue with this type of mining, and the Pebble mine, is very simple. Economics, so-called.
There is tremendous demand for new sources of raw materials to provide for human populations. I will try to put it into perspective. We were all horrified by the oil well blowout in the GoM that spewed roughly 50,000 barrels of crude into the ocean per day. But every day, in the US, 20 million barrels of crude are consumed. The result of that consumption is not neutral. So although we may well be apalled by the pollution of the gulf by that one folly, every day we dump 400 times that amount of hydrocarbon waste into our environment. And that is only the US.
WE are the problem.
Lynnrockets: voted.
Love that dirty water.
Good Luck
I would love to know, too. Someone in my county has one on their car, and I don’t know who they are to ask. I know I can Google and find them, but I would rather support a group that is fighting this.
Did someone mention on previous story how one could get a No Pebble Mine sticker?
Could you post the info again?
Who wants to wager the next Palin grandchild will be named Pebble???
Helen, of Margaret and Helen, has been on a role this past November. I was going to recommend her last post, but then I found five I had missed. And I promise you, they will all be appreciated by mudpups.
http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/
Last sunrise of the year at slipstream’s house. With the low sun angle this time of year (I live on the edge of Anchorage, 61 degrees north) and the 3300 foot mountain to the south of my house, for weeks now my house has been in the shadow of the mountain for parts of the day. Tomorrow the mountain will block out the sun entirely. Today if the weather were clear the sun would peek over the ridgeline for the first time at 2:23 p.m., then play hide-and-seek with the trees and bumps on the ridgeline, never fully rising, and be gone at 3:08 p.m., not to return this year.
Unfortunately, today is cloudy with a large storm bearing in from the west, so I won’t see the last sunrise of the year. I am celebrating anyway. Bye-bye, sun.
Next sunrise at slipstream’s house will be 2:42 p.m. on January 7. If that day is clear, I will see part of the sun over the ridgeline for 17 minutes.
These data are specific to my house. Other parts of Anchorage can get sunshine even on winter solstice – no mountain to cast a shadow. Way up north in Barrow, the sun set on November 19 and won’t rise again until January 24.
I just love weather and sun geeks! Thanks for sharing this with us. I like to take rides out the Old Glenn from Palmer to the interchange in winter because the sun disappears behind Pioneer and then Twin/Goat and POW pretty early in the year. It’s always interesting to see and feel the difference between the sunny locales and that little stretch of cold and dark highway.
I live in a wooded area, but only 300′ elevation, but we lose the sun except for a few minutes a day this time of year shining through our South facing dining room window. We have old growth forest, an undeveloped greenbelt, behind our home and the tall cottonwoods, aspen, birch and spruce prevent the low sun from penetrating. We call our property the “little corridor of chill” and it is a most welcome respite from the sun and heat in summer, however, it’s a little icebox for a few months of the year.
The low light is awesome when it comes to keeping a clean house though, one does not notice the dust and dog fur as much as when the sun is higher.
Hunker down and enjoy it while it lasts!
Not to rub it in but… here at 9 degrees 56 minutes south “summer” is about to begin. But it is not called that because it would be like calling gray a color. What has finally begun after an epic drought this year, is the rainy season. The worst of the drought was north of the Rio Amazonos, it virtually dried up the Rio Negro which itself is about twice the size of the Mississippi. Normally.
October was horrendous because there was too much burning and much of it got out of control since even the standing bush was parched and the field burning spread into the forests. The smoke and dust from the dry ground was so bad that it affected people very badly and reached as far south as Cuiaba which is 600 km south of us. No one here remembers a dry season so bad as that.
For the next six months or so the days will be a bit longer than the nights, sunrise around 5:00 AM and sunset around 6:30 PM. Despite the rain, it will still be warm. On average about 28 degrees C
although when it is clear which is rare, it can still hit 35. In the dry season it can hit 45. Not much variation either. Now and then we will get a blast of “cold” air that makes it necessary to wear a jacket in the morning and evening but not often and not for long. Nights rarely get colder than 24 degrees C.
It might sound like we live in a kind of paradise, which is true in a way, but the 300 cm of rain we will probably get make that a moldy, mildewed, kind of rotten paradise with a constant population of biting, stinging and otherwise obnoxious insects. I know the insects in Alaska are worrisome in the warm months but at least you get a break when it starts to freeze. Here that never happens.
Just to creep everybody out a bit, Nov. and Dec. are the months when the tarantulas breed so the males are all over the place looking for females. They are not particularly dangerous or anything like that, but they are big for spiders and most people seem to be a little phobic of them. They are most dangerous in terms of the fact that my drivers fanatically try to run them over when they see them on the roads and with these roads their efforts to kill a single spider put the whole vehicle and its contents at risk.
No risk of frost bite here. But then you don’t have malaria or dengue to cope with.
I guess the lesson is that our world is both good and bad in differing respects.
Usually it is pretty clear which is which.
I spent 6 months in the PI.. so that moldy mildewy smell is quite familar… going thru the Panama canal last year brought it all back….and the humidity !! we’d left out of SF, and were all bundled up from the fog, so our systems went thru quite a shock… I don’t miss the bugs and humidity at all…I find the Central Coast of California to be just about perfect..a little bit of the 4 seasons, but not enough to be uncomfortable at any time…I like it :mo betta” than Hawaii !
Tarantulas. That’s all I need to know. No. Way.
I think I’m more okay with our rattlesnakes and other snakes, cockroaches and other creepy crawlies than I will ever ever ever be with a tarantula.
The Economist weighs in on Palin’s presidential aspirations. They give her too much credit, in my opinion, for playing the media and the American public for fools in order to line her pockets. I believe that most of her success can be billed to dumb luck and the fact that she has some powerful puppet masters (hi to all the Murdoch stooges!). My fear, however, is that this will give many the impression that she is actually smarter than she is (Chauncey Gardner anyone?).
http://www.economist.com/node/17629651?story_id=17629651&fsrc=rss
I saw this link over at Gryphen’s and it is an excellent column written by John Dean, former WH counsel. He explains his view of a disastrous Palin presidential run:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20101129.html
I really liked his article. However, I have to disagree with him..Palin will never be a viable candidate.
I agree with you. In no way does she have the discipline or the intelligence let along all the extraordinary qualities necessary for a true leader. She is lucky and knows how to capitalize on that luck but she lacks a real intellect. Her banal appeal is not unlike the that of Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Kate Gosslin and I certainly don’t think any of them are qualified to do anything other than entertain (and even that is a point of debate).
Sarah Palin is a curiosity and nothing more. Shockingly, many Americans are so star struck by her that they want to see her in the WH. “Only in America” used to have such a nice ring to it but the popularity of Sarah Palin makes most of us use that phrase as a snarky explanation for her rise to prominence.
I read the Dean article as well. I think we should all be wary. We ended up with Bush after all and before him Reagan. Perhaps one thing that would truly discourage the grifter from actually wanting to be president would be to show her pictures of past presidents before and after and she might, just might mind you, think twice. It is a difficult and vexing job.
The second thing in favor of the safety and security of the country is that I think she is primarily motivated by greed, not power per se, after all, she didn’t manage to get rich as governor though we don’t know what kind of kickback she might have gotten on the pipeline deal. Still, at the rate she is going she will be bucks up for a good long time and may be reluctant to shut off the money spigot.
Last but not least, I think Dean erred in assuming that six years is long enough for her to gain the semblence of competency that would make her a viable candidate. It took her six years to get a degree in journalism which was obviously richly undeserved.
Just speculating and I don’t know anything about politics.
Sarah Palin reveals herself in autobiography.
“The political Palin who emerges from America by Heart is less appealing. That Palin is prone to unsupported generalizations, wants simple answers to complex questions, has no sympathy with bipartisanship, mistakes sarcasm for wit, prefers derision to debate, and, like other zealots of both the right and the left, fails to realize that the great heart of America is moderate, alternating pragmatically between just-right-of-center and just-left-of-center.
One of the most interesting things America by Heart reveals about Palin is that she seems to know less than she ought about our history.
This is not a minor point, because Palin makes a very big deal of using the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution as warrants for her political agenda.
Without judging her platform, a reader can legitimately ask: If she doesn’t know history as well as she should, what else doesn’t she know?”
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20101203_America_by_HeartReflections.html#ixzz1758sro9G
Another great one!
Uh-oh. The writer of this piece has a Ph.D. Another elitist in the eyes of the Palinderthals.
Sarah Palin is wrong about John F. Kennedy, religion and politics. This is written by his niece, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and it is very good.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120303209.html
That was very well written, indeed. One thing those who want to remove the separation of church and state forget is that America doesn’t only offer freedom OF religion, it offers freedom FROM religion. There are plenty of people who don’t have any religion whatsoever and Obama is still OUR President too.
Yet one more thing Palin and her bots fail to understand, nor do they care to try. If she is ever elected to office again, then her constituents, be it national or local, get what they deserve.
That was a wonderful piece, thank you.
“My uncle urged that religion be private, removed from politics, because he feared that making faith an arena for public contention would lead American politics into ill-disguised religious warfare, with candidates tempted to use faith to manipulate voters and demean their opponents. ”
How right he was. Sadly, that’s exactly where many on the right are trying desperately to lead us.
She may have just made another mistake besides dissing Ronald Reagan but also JFK as a lot of us thought the man was great.I still remember all the noise about him being catholic and the republicans saying the pope would be running our country.,Didn’t happen and pray to God palin won’t either.With this book it seems she is slamming everyone who is different from her except Romney,Maybe she hopes he will run with her.
Oh, dear. Mrs. Palin’s latest tome didn’t make the cut.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/books/review/100-notable-books-2010.html?_r=1&nl=books&emc=booksupdateema1
Sarah Palin, Kate Gosselin Go Camping
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/03/sarah-palin-kate-gosselin-camping_n_791697.html
How presidential is that?
Alan Grayson Jabs Fox News Hosts, George W. Bush On Personal Stakes In Bush Tax Cuts Extension
“His argument: Fox News contributors such as Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Sarah Palin, as well as the previous president of the United States himself, support, and in some cases aggressively lobby for, the complete extension of the Bush tax cuts because they would pad their pockets with an additional six-figure (in Rush Limbaugh’s case, seven-figure) sum each year.
“They want tax cuts for the rich because they want a tax cut for themselves,” Grayson said. “Instead of placating these people and letting them spew out onto the airwaves their lies about the Bush tax cuts without ever revealing the fact that they stand to gain millions, millions of dollars each year from their selfish desire to take advantage of the rest of America, let’s do this: Let’s take that money and create jobs.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/03/alan-grayson-fox-news-tax-cuts_n_791533.html
Alan Grayson is rich, too, so he’s speaking for the people, against his own interest. Selfless.
Palin taught Miller well–the case of the missing emails; Miller investigated:
http://alaskadispatch.com/dispatches/politics/7710-joe-millers-missing-e-mails-under-investigation
At the end of this clip, McKinnon likens Palin to a mafia boss:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/mckinnon-palin-mafia-godmother-12286032
This article from Pravda has been posted before (if you haven’t read it, you’re gonna love it) but I just read through the comments and thought you might like to as well (again, if you haven’t already).
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/30-11-2010/115998-spankin_sarah-0/
Good morning, all !
Plows came through last night and left us with snow mounds that tower over my head. Reports of snowfall totals for my area say that about 40 inches fell in 24 hours. . I was out there at 6am to get groceries and there were already many neighbors out chatting, laughing and digging out their homes and cars. Winter storms bring out the best in Buffalonians. I love that.
Off to read the newest summary of that atrocious book. I wonder who she manages to alienate in this chapter. She’s got quite the list so far!!
Wow, BuffaloGal…be careful walking around in between piles that high! Glad to hear that the thruway was reopened and those poor people FINALLY got to go on their way.
During my first full winter here in WNY I started with a new school assignment the last week of February. A week and half later, we had a storm that dumped 42 inches in 2 days. The snow was so deep that the city sanitation dept had to put it in trucks and dump it in the Genesee River…a process that was excruciatingly slow.
Since I work in the city school district, many of our kids walk to school, and it took so long to clear the roads that the sidewalks were neglected for a week. It was a great start to my new job…work a week and a half, get a week off!
Stay safe and warm, BG!
Anobody want to make book on Mrs. Palin getting fined/arrested/tarred and feathered for hunting w/o a license? Apparently, she is going to get her caribou on her next show. But, a slight problem:
http://malialitman.wordpress.com/201…dog-dont-hunt/
I wonder if Fish and Game will do anything? Around here, she would be in deep trouble! So, who does she own in Alaska Fish and Game?
page not found
Where did it go? I copied it this morning, and now the article is gone! I am going to look for what I copied.
I read her blog everyday, and found a loooong post this morning with this information in it:
On Monday, September 13, 2010 Palin was in Kansas City giving another speech. It was the specific comments in that speech that alerted me to the deception that Palin has promoted throughout the last two years. She mentioned that she had “recently gone hunting in Alaska, and still had caribou blood under her fingernails. Furthering the deception, Palin said “We eat, therefore we hunt.” The idea that B.S. would appear for a speech with her hair and make-up done, with blood under her beautifully manicured nails, was too hard to believe. B.S. had gone too far! Palin was either lying when she made this comment, or she was announcing from her podium that she had violated Alaska’s hunting laws. A casual observer would assume B.S. was smart enough to be alert to violation of the Alaska hunting laws after the controversy surrounding Troopergate, and Mike Wooten’s disclosure that he shot a moose out of season. A casual observer would be in error to make that assumption.
Here are the facts that I have been able to document from my home in Dallas, Texas, with the use of my computer and telephone. The most important information, regarding the lack of a hunting license came directly from a representative of the Alaska Fish and Game Department.
1. On Saturday, Aug. 28th Sarah Palin was with Glenn Beck at the Restoring Honor Rally in Washington D.C.
2. On Saturday, Aug. 28th the Alaska Fish and Game Department announced that it would close the Fortymile caribou herd hunt after a single day. The reason for the decision to close the hunt after one day was that last year in just three days, hunters killed 870 caribou. Given the declining numbers of caribou, the Alaskan Fish and Game Department announced that hunting of caribou would cease at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 29th.
3. The distance between Washington D.C. and Anchorage Alaska is 3369 miles. Even a direct flight, with no delays would take 7 hours and 30 minutes. It seems reasonable to presume that Sarah Palin didn’t travel from Washington D.C. on Sunday Aug. 29th for 7 and one-half hours, drive to Wasilla, and then go caribou hunting in what was left of her day on Sunday. If she hunted after that day, it would have been in violation of the prohibitions enacted by the Alaska Fish and Game Department. What we do know is that she gave an interview to Fox “News” the evening of Aug. 31, 2010 wearing a pink suit. There was no indication from that interview that she had been out hunting or that she had encountered any difficulty removing any caribou blood from her hands, face, or body.
4. According to the Alaska Fish and Game Department, as of September 16, 2010 there was no record of a hunting license for Sarah Palin.
5. Upon further inquiry I was advised by the person employed with the Alaska Fish and Game Department that Sarah Palin had not held a license for 2008 or 2009.
6. Because the Alaska Fish and Game Department is committed to protecting animals that might be hunted in the state, the number of hunters allowed to hunt during the designated season (even if it is only one day long) is limited. Because there are often many more hunters than animals, the Fish and Game Department holds a lottery to determine which hunters will be allowed to hunt. This lottery is held in November and December of the year prior to the August season in which the hunters are allowed to hunt. Thus the lottery to determine which hunters would be allowed to hunt in August of 2010 would have been determined by lottery at the end of 2009.
7. In order to be registered for the lottery, a hunter would be required to have a license to hunt in Alaska. Thus, because Sarah Palin did not have a license to hunt in 2009, she could not have participated in the lottery, and thus would not have been allowed to hunt caribou at any time during 2010.
8. In searching the internet for the pictures of Sarah Palin hunting, the only pictures I can find are pictures of Palin with dead animals, but she is not holding a gun or knife and there is no blood on her hands.
Only two possibilities exist. Either Palin lied in Kansas when she said she had been hunting caribou in Alaska and had blood under her fingernails, or Palin hunted in violation of Alaska law, and without a license. In either case, Palin is dishonest.
I found it again, maybe. I am thinking the URI was too long. Here is the tiny one.
http://tinyurl.com/3x5e7t4
Link to a promo vid for Dec 5th show
http://www.usmagazine.com/moviestvmusic/news/first-look-kate-gosselin-goes-camping-with-sarah-palin-2010312
This (un) Reality Show just keeps getting more and more bizarre and “Hollywood-esque!” Worlds collide! Sarah and Kate??? Just weird…..
This series is so clearly a bit fat “commercial” for Sarah…. All that huntin’ and fishin’ and mountain-climbin’ and campin’ and fish-clubbin’ and other “manly” stuff…. Is she trying to show us how she’s really a guy in spite of the naughty monkeys and push-up bras? Gee…. that must mean she’s fit to be president!
I know perfectly well that women are very capable of hunting, fishing, etc, but methinks there’s definitely a message being sent here beyond just “pioneer wife.”
Palin owns Alaska and everybody in it. She also owns Fox and everybody who works there. Sarah Sow owns it all….. except for the Bronx.
I hope someday to visit the Bronx. And, also, please don’t give her so much credit.
Voted.
I had to laugh at this.
Sign gives pedestrians the middle finger
http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1202/washington.html
Bristol….?
I need some help from the Mudflatters. Self-promotion is not something that I am generally fond of, but an opportunity has arisen to get my song parodies and whatnot distributed more widely (not so widely as to compete with the fine Mudflats blog, mind you) and you Mudflatters can help.
Boston’s largest talk radio station (WRKO AM) has chosen Lynnrockets as a finalist in its “Next Great Political Blogger Contest”. Yours truly has been selected by the station’s staff (from over 200 entries) to be one of 10 finalists for a position with the station as a “liberal” blogger. There will be two winners (a “liberal” and a “conservative”) chosen by means of internet votes received. This is our chance to get even with the Palinbots for what they did for Bristol Palin on “Dancing With The Stars”. Like Bristol, I lack talent but with all of you voting for me, I may be able to pull-off an upset win. I offer my eternal gratitude if you loyal Mudflatters will visit the WRKO website (Here or at the link below) and vote for wait…wait…here comes the spoiler…”Kevin McCarthy”. Looks like I’ve now been officially outed. Please vote early and often as the contest ends on Saturday, December 11th at 11:59pm EST. I would truly appreciate your help and if you really want to be of assistance, please encourage your family and friends to vote also, too!
Here is the link to the voting site (please note that after voting in the designated spot next to my name, you must scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “confirm vote” prompt which takes you to a second page to confirm the vote): http://wrko.radiotown.com/ngpb/vote.php
Thanks so much for any help!
Lynnrockets
Heh, I was just coming here to talk you up! You’re one of the Mudflats Favorite Sons, as it were. Good luck Lynnrockets. We’re behind you.
Thanks for the support. Every little bit helps.
I will, and congratulations on the nomination. Best of luck!
My vote is in. Good luck!
I voted for you and will again,I can always use the term C.O.D., handsome picture by the way.
done. good luck.
Done and set up daily reminder, will tweet also
Done. You’re our fabulous Lynnrockets! Good luck.
Done! Good job! Crossing fingers.
Going to send link to family to get them to vote too!
Keep us updated!
You folks are the best!
Voted! Just wondered why the website has two Repubs pictured at the top? They may be choosing two bloggers, but I’m not sure they won’t be on the same side…
Voted for you. Best of luck.
we got you back Lynnrockets good luck