Open Thread – Maddow & Mudflats
Landing from The Rachel Maddow Show on Vimeo.
I may be the last person to actually see this awesome clip from Rachel Maddow’s blog. Yes, I’m running a little behind but, better late than never. Here you can see Rachel & crew’s plane coming in for a landing in Anchorage. They discover the mudflats, and Maddow’s producer Bill Wolff gives us a nice plug!
What a pleasure it was getting to meet Rachel Maddow again, and also meeting for the first time her amazing crew. Those are some hard working people, believe you me.
We’re all hopeful that they’ll come back to Alaska to visit us again when they can spend more time in our great state. Believe me, the political wackiness isn’t going anywhere.
To tide you over, you can enjoy my photo album of their visit HERE.
~Rachel Maddow and delegate to the Alaska Constitutional Convention, Vic Fischer
http://peakoilhausfrau.blogspot.com/2010/11/hell-announces-pilot-colonization.html
Just for laughs
serious laughs
but laughs nonetheless
🙂
“Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), recently tapped to become chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, believes that despite the GOP’s monumental electoral gains last week, the party left some vital Senate seats on the playing field thanks primarily to the work of Sarah Palin.
This from the Shelby County Reporter over the weekend:
“The Senate would be Republican today except for states (in which Palin endorsed candidates) like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware,” Bachus said. “Sarah Palin cost us control of the Senate.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/08/spencer-bachus-sarah-palin-senate_n_780558.html
LOL….I arrived back in Ireland last Wednesday morning and hubby had been reading the Guardian. He informed me that the GOP had decimated the Dems. I immediately got onto the googles and saw that Reid had won and O’Donnell had been defeated. I informed him that Palin’s meddling had cost the GOP the Senate .
He didn’t believe me, but he will be eating crow tomorrow.
IrishHubby has to come with us to Alaska. he will love it and love teh mountains and teh nature. we will need him to protect us from teh grizzlies and teh mooses and all furry ones. he will then get a good idea of Alaskan politics and why we Mudpups are important to the national/world discourse and he will automatically become a Mudpup himself just like teh other DearHubbies.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/11/pataki-looking-at-run-for-president-peekskill-twice-the-size-of-wasilla.html
Scroll down to the bottom. It seems that RAM didn’t like the comparison between Peekskill and Wasilla, saying “The Mat-Su Valley is the size of West Virginia…”
Two things: Isn’t Wasilla one TOWN within Mat-Su?
and: Perhaps they need to get their head around the notion of relative population. After all, there are 16 cities in the Lower 48 that have higher populations than the state of Alaska.
Idiots.
Yup. Wasilla is only one town, popn approx 6,000. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough has at least 13 times more that many people with several towns: Palmer, Sutton, Cantwell, Talkeetna, Willow, Big Lake, Trapper Creek, Petersville, Butte, to name a few – at least 29 towns and more communities.
It is big in square miles but a population density of just over two people per square mile average.
$Palin was not the mayor in Mat-Su, but the tititular head of a very small town, a job which she quit before her term was up. She’s very good at quitting.
Should we try to get this info into the light of day? Or is it hopeless?
Oh dear, it may be time to get my prescription adjusted. I read, “Wasilla is only one town, PORN approx 6,000”
*blink blink squint*
Yeah. She’s got quitting down, now let’s see if she’ll stick with it. I wonder what her silence would cost.
Porn – yup – that, also, too – don’t forget Wasilla being the meth capital of the USA if not the world. Todd’s sister was up on burglery charges a year or two ago – I suspect it was to get money for crack.
I find that terribly sad. I lost too many friends and classmates to crack in the ’80s–meth is worse. Far worse. I wish there were no families that ever had to deal with these troubles.
Of course, alcoholism is an even more persistent scourge and has been for as long as humans have been brewing up trouble for themselves.
*heaves sigh*
AKM, browsed through your flickr stream and was disappointed by not seeing any pictures of you and Rachel together. :-< Also, there is a pic, second from the last, I think, of a nice-looking short-haired blond with Rachel. She was sitting on Rachel's left during the show, just the opposite of you on the right. She looks so familiar. Who is she? I couldn't leave a comment on the site, cause I don't have an account there. Thanks.
Sometimes living in TX gets me down. So many nutters. A lot like living in AK, actually. But there are wonderful people here, as in AK, of course, like this author whose signing I will be going to in a few weeks. Here’s a really wonderful heart-warming post from her blog that I think fellow mudflatters will love as much as I do. It’s out of date a bit now, but the message will never be out of date:
http://www.chookooloonks.com/blog/2010/9/2/love-thursday-so-about-that-photobomb.html
“Love always wins.”
yes. i believe it does in the end. we live in a world that glorifies stupidity and ignorance. where empathy is disregarded and not understood to be the basis of humanity. one cannot be said to be fully human without it. so yes, Love can conquer hate but at what cost?
On one of the ultra-ultra-ultra-conservative, strict-Constitutionalist, uber-G-d and Country, “There will be blood unless…” sites I visit, the posters all expound and exclaim over the wrongs of this country and share with each other vital ‘information’ gleaned from any manner of dubious sources…all of it, be reassured, gospel. One of the core contributors to the articles, links, and discussions on the bible-quoting site goes by the handle: Wiccangirl.
I chuckle daily when I see that handle. I wonder if any of the rest of the super-Patriots on the site have any clue as to what a Wiccan is and how at odds the practices of that religion are to their talibangelical desires, and/or if Wiccangirl ever feels like the odd-one-out amongst the talibangelicals who’re working so gosh-darned hard to get Xian-Sharia instituted all across this nation.
Yes, I’m easily amused. beth.
Actually, the original meaning of witchcraft included praying or calling upon a higher power to do evil to another. An awful lot of these fundamentalist churches engage in witchcraft as defined by what the original Greek said, on a daily basis.
Wiccangirl may indeed be an appropriate moniker!
Good grief. Palin is now wading into monetary policy and telling Ben Bernanke how to do his job. There can’t be two back to back sentences in this up coming speech that she understands. Best line: “Palin, whose monetary policy credentials could not be deduced Monday…..” Runner up: “Palin will then argue that ‘the worse part’ of this is that ‘the White House refuses to upen up our off shore and on shore oil reserves for exploration.’ It’s unclear how drilling for oil relates to monetary policy.”
I think she’s gone a bridge too far on this one. And I’m sure Bernanke is quaking in his boots.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/08/palin-tells-bernanke-cease-desist-_n_780419.html
Just saw this on huffpost as well. The idea that Palin has any understanding of economic policy – macro or micro – is absolutely laughable. There have been many criticisms of Bernanke’s plan and many of them have validity but Palin does not understand economics. Economics is one of the hardest courses in most colleges. She has in no way proven that she understand core economic concepts. She just repeats the talking points of Faux News.
One of the comments on HP was that since Joe McGinniss sent her a “cease and desist” notice last week re: using footage of him in the tv show, she decided to take that shiny, new found expression and use it against someone too!! Makes as much sense as anything else about this speech.
I agree. We don’t even know if she can balance her checkbook.
Her hand-picked protege can’t and had to engage in some “creative financing” in order to fund his campaign. Loaning money to himself from his campaign.
Ohhhh….hey….has anyone followed up on that yet? He took a BIG gamble with that move, how in the WORLD is he going to pay back all that money? Or is he finally going to declare bankruptcy and go on welfare for REAL?
I shouldn’t be so mean, but hot damn, I can’t wait for him to try and talk his way out of that thicket. Would this involve suckling off the federal teat, from a federal penitentiary?
I’d love to see them give her an economics test as well as one on the history of Alaska. She’d flunk! What a giant farce! That they even print her crap is what truly amazes me.
And, Lisa is in Washington D.C. She think she has won this final race, which has not been confirmed. She lost the primary, resigned the Senate, has not been confirmed and still parades herself as Alaska’s senator. Anyone confused as me?
She did not resign from the senate. She lost her leadership position. She has a “lameduck” session coming up and money to raise to pay lawyers to watch the counting of the write in ballots. Alaska politics is still my favorite spectator sport.
I checked Freakonomics and they don’t have any thing there about $owah PayMe’s economic opinion, so, in my estimation, she is meaningless.
Her ‘bots will think that Sarah Jesus Christ Palin spoke gospel, though, so it will be all over the media for another cycle of her inanity.
Good Gawd, Y’all.
The worst thing for $arah would be for the economy to improve on Obama’s watch. She cares nothing about this country- nor does she know anything about monetary policy. She is scared the economy will improve before she runs against President Obama in 1012. She is an evil witch- to resort to name calling.
Quaking from laughter, maybe!
Isn’t she the one who left the town of Wasilla some 20 million in debt after her inglorious term as mayor??? And THIS is who we want to take economic advice from???
Different Topic – but highly interesting – Are we a nation ruled by LAW???
In Colorado a high earning exec hit & run will not have felony charges filed because
“it would hinder HIS earning power” and prevent the victim (a NY Dr who performs
liver transplants) from collecting restitution
snip] Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger’s profession, and that entered into it,” Hurlbert said. “When you’re talking about restitution, you don’t want to take away his ability to pay.” [end snip
2nd Snip ] Mr. Erzinger struck me, fled and left me for dead on the highway,” Milo wrote. “Neither his financial prominence nor my financial situation should be factors in your prosecution of this case.” [end 2nd
read more @
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/08/martin-erzinger-morgan-stanley-hit-and-run-_n_780294.html
I just came across this description of Palin. 🙂
“Palin has rapidly fallen into the role of the friend of a friend that you invited to a party because you thought they would liven it up, but you really didn’t know them that well. Once they arrive and you realize your mistake, you are forced to make excuses for them as they proceed to drink too much, tell rambling stories that make no sense in a loud voice, spill punch everywhere and vomit behind the couch. Palin is the Republican party’s crazy unwanted guest with the lampshade on her head and the awful laugh, and she is NOT going home until the party is OVER and someone puts her in a cab headed for the Bridge to Nowhere. With our luck, that’s not going to happen for a very long time, if ever. She’s having fun at this party, guys. And she’s just getting warmed up.”
http://perpetualpost.com/?p=9284
marvelous find Irishgirl and oh so true. for that reason alone i no longer curse her. she is at that party to which she was invited. she is busy trashing their house and she won’t leave until she burns the house down. we can understand now why her children love to destroy things that don’t belong to them.
the Republicans brought this ignorant hellion to fame. they gave her millions and now they are stuck with her. couldn’t happen to a better bunch, if you ask me.
Please–give spew alerts, would you? I almost fried my keyboard.
Sounds a lot like the guy who took me to my junior prom (minus the vomiting, thank goodness!)!
Now THAT was a night I couldn’t wait to be over!!!
can’t get past the look at that part, tried two different browsers 🙁
Possibly as props!!
I wonder if SP’s reality show will picture any of the mudflats?
Thanks AKM for the scrapbook pictures. Great memories!
Hey, that Slideshow (duh, just found it) really makes it easier. Thx!
They saw too little. East Coasters know so little about wilderness. They need to come back for a visit with real Alaska.
Well, here’s one solution to that lack of exploration…They could all watch $arah’s show on TLC to discover the “real Alaska”! [ducking –very quickly– to avoid objects with pointy-bits sent hurtling my way for that suggestion] beth.
smiling and waving to fishingmama from the East Coast.
we folks would love to see the wilderness but we scared.
there’s bears, wolves, lynx and other furry ones who would
love to have us come….for dinner.
You just have to come see us Mz bubbles-
the mudflats offer more danger than most of the furries
most of the furries would rather we made a lot of noise when we are tramping about so they can be sure to go the other way…
bubbles haven’t ya ever been campingin the wilds???
nuh uh….i never been camping at all. i used to pretend by making a tent with chairs and eating my dinner inside the tent.
Haha, I did that too also.
Front page photo of safe furry creature viewing for you, Bubbles. And bring Irishgirl with you!
http://www.adn.com/
(“Dawson Lockett, 12, photographs a bull moose resting on his family’s lawn.”)
Don’t forget the article about the wolves dragging off the pet beagle above the moose. Nice pic of the cute beagle makes you forget the wolves are doing what wolves do.
LOL. Irishgirl and i were thinking about our next adventure. wouldn’t a trip to Alaska be wonderful?
bubbles, bubbles, bubbles…
I grew up on LI (on the Queens/Nassau border) and now live in western NY so I’m not exactly a wilderness kind of girl. However, after 4 trips to Alaska, I can tell you there is NOTHING like seeing a moose or a grizzly bear in person!
On one of my trips, a friend and I spent a few days on the Kenai Peninsula. Our last morning, we drove from Homer (Shannyn country!) to Anchorage to catch our plane and passed 5 moosies on the edge – or middle – of the road, including one mama and her twin mooselets. In Denali, I’ve seen about 15 or 16 grizzlies altogether, including three that walked within a couple of feet of the bus.
Watching humpback whales feed near your boat, seeing the clouds covering the top of Mt. McKinley, flying in a tiny plane for hours without seeing any signs of ‘civilization’, visiting a town in the Arctic Circle whose year-round population is 13, eating freshly grilled salmon at a picnic in the woods (and I don’t even LIKE fish!), watching a glacier calve chunks the size of small buildings…OHHHH so worth it!!!
If you have the opportunity to visit there, do NOT pass it up, especially with all the wonderful people we’ve all met through the ‘flats who live there…it’s almost like visiting family!
Someday I’m going to gather my courage, pack myself up and move there. FL and AZ are wayyy too hot for me…when my friends are retiring to the south, I’m heading for Alaska!
Now I know why my ears were burning! Loved meeting you in D.C. Scout….I wish we had had more time to talk.
Saving for my Alaska trip already.
Yes, I think that was the BEST show Rachel and her wonderful crew have produced. Funny, factful, homespun effect. Best ever!
…and an exciting time was had by all. Thanks for the video and you photo album, AKM.
‘your’
Too bad she can’t get up here more often. Her show was great.
Keith Olberman FTW!
Phil, not so much. (Rachel, sorry I misspell your name all the time… still love you and have HUGE girl crush on you, mostly for your heart. Your looks are just gravy for me.)
oops forgot to mention, Rachel, brains goes without saying.
Woof!